Harley Benton Nashville Nylon NT

The Man-in-the-Moon signed the Quality Control release note on my Harley Benton Nashville, nylon string. For when it arrived it has only 5 strings….working. I checked my order. Yes it said 6-strings. I checked my other eight guitars. Yes 6-strings. So what is going on?

The D string didn’t match the set on the guitar and emitted no sound….AT ALL. Goodness. Was this manufactured prior to 1700 when guitars were 5-string instruments?

What on earth is going on? Ahhhh. Got it. Change the rogue string for a shiny new one that matched the set. Tuned up. BUT still no sound. Hhhhmmm.

As Germany isn’t next door, I couldn’t walk to Thomann and knock. I removed the saddle. Sure enough the piezo pickup was intact. What next to check?

Oooops. I dropped the shiny, white saddle piece I’d removed. But it didn’t fall onto the floor. It floated up to the ceiling and remained there. I stood on a chair to retrieve it. Wow it was featherlight. On its underside I noticed that it had ejection holes from the plastic moulding process. I inserted a proper bone saddle into the bridge, tuned-up and whey-hey – Music arrived at the D-string. So the holes on the underside of the supplied saddle were preventing the piezo (pressure) effect from working.

No problem.

Except my bone saddle was straight edge at the top and the removed one had a radius. Into my workshop. Rough emery paper needed. When the radius matched. Back to fit. But the height of the 6th string at the 12th fret was enormous. Back to the emery to grind its bottom. Careful check, but still too high. Sanded some more and happy.

Now for the grey and dusty-looking fretboard. Got the Linseed oil out and with the drenched cloth, gave it a scrub. Goodness. I now have a wonderful-looking dark brown fretboard. That worked.

Now to tune the guitar. But I couldn’t as the tuners on the unseen-side, wouldn’t twist. They were stuck. So I turned the guitar to left-handed and gave the tuners an angry stare. Oh dear. What to do? Adjusting the torque on the screws didn’t work. Greasing the barrels didn’t work. Then I spotted that the nylon barrels were badly fitted into the wood. Oiled both sides and Hey presto, the winders began to turn.

Someone rang my house bell. Went to investigate. Good news. My Butler, who I hired earlier, had arrived. So I sat on my stool with my left thigh raised in the Classical position, waiting. He then lifted the guitar onto my thigh. Now I was anchored for the next hour and a quarter. So dismissed the Butler and asked him to return after practise to release me.

You’ve guessed correctly. This guitar is HEAVY.

I heard on the news that someone has stolen a section of hi-speed rail track. I have found it. It is fitted into my HB Nashville to separate each fret. Then hammered into a distinct radius. These enormous frets mean that your left-hand fingers disappear each time you finger a note. As it takes time to extricate your finger from the deep and move it to the next note, I can only play Adagio. Tunes like Brahms lullaby and Silent Night - over and over.

Talking of frets, there are 16 before the neck meets the body. You can overcome this enormous distance by re-arranging all your music from the first position to the 5th position. That was still a stretch. Chose to move to the more playable 10th position. After all there are 21 frets to explore.

The plastic (again) nut is 48mm width. You therefore expect that the width across all 6 strings will be 40mm, giving an 8mm gap. But no. It measures 39mm. What!

Playing fingerstyle, I found my right-hand seemed content. Big surprise on measuring the string spacing at the bridge. It is the Classical 60mm. A 48mm nut normally ends up 57.5mm at the bridge. The extra width helps playability.

The guitar is slim at 45mm and is smaller by 50mm across the bouts. It sits well on your thigh.

The White House requested an audience to hear its timbre. The Royal Albert Hall too. I tossed and turned wondering what tune would suit. Then I woke up.

the guitar is remarkable value for money..superb body, super-smooth neck, lovely fret and fingerboard.....but the routing in the bridge for the piezo was poor and resulted in treble and bass E strings delivering volume levels much higher than other strings. This is typical of low cost piezo pick ups. I stripped the whole bridge assembly to find that the socket for the piezo was not flat but slightly concave. Buy this guitar on my advice but be prepared for some careful re-fitting of the piezo. Internal wiring was good, nothing wrong with the piezo itself, control pots work really well....wiring looms tidy....I have looked for a way of amplifying a classical guitar at low cost, that is without expensive microphones and acoustic guitar amplifiers.
A few more minutes and a little more care on the production line would deliver a perfectly flat platform for the piezo....and the pressure sensitive piezo relies on this.
I have worked on this and after 3 or 4 attempts now have a good string volume balance...good enough to achieve perfectly balanced string volume with the help of a £20 Behringer compressor pedal.
The resultant guitar is a joy to play and the sound range, thanks to separate bass and treble pots is excellent.
Add “superlube’ to the tuners straight away and work this in. I really like the 45mm string spacing at the nut for finger style playing and the general action is first class.
TO THOMMAN’S CREDIT I HAVENT HAD TO REPLACED ANYTHING!!!...just refined the original set up..and I won’t part with the guitar...I play it every day.

I use this guitar at home, mainly unplugged in the evening. It is heavier than I expected as it is completely solid, the holes are only a few mm deep. It really is a nylon guitar with the physical characteristics of an electric, albeit with a wider flatter fretboard.
Overall appearance is good from a distance, but there are some natural blemishes in the top and the staining around the fretboard binding/body is not great up close. No big deal for me.
The piezo sounds great on the bottom 5 strings, but the top e is much quieter. I'm hoping that I can adjust the sensor position when I restring it. The bass and treble controls give plenty of useful variation.
It holds tune well and intonation is good all the way up the board.
Overall I'm very happy. The guitar is great for quiet practice and at this price I don't expect an AAA top and finish perfection.
Note: I couldn't cure the quiet top 'e' - the piezo element seems too short to cover all the strings!!

A real quality build and superb guitar for very little money. Looks stunning and sounds great through acoustic amp or a good DI and straight to PA or speaker. Light, plays well - should be great for gigging. It's set up quite high out of the box but replace the bridge with a lower bone one and there's also good truss rod adjustment. Sounds reasonable for practice unplugged but hook it up to the Fishman Aura DI, dial in your favourite setting for classical guitars and it sounds as good as a top notch instrument. I replaced the truss rod cover with a wooden one and again it looks great. Now gigging with it in small venues - something different for the punters.

The sound is sweet. I tuned 39 times (yesterday i get it) and the strings is soft, maybe for this.. the sound have a little unbalance, the 6th -5-4 strings is little lower the volume and i need to check the saddle if is flat.. this is not good (the fretboard is very good job and the saddle very cheap?) the action is like electric guitar in the limit of hi action but i play easy..and is easy to make it lower the action.. i hope for the tuning the problem is the strings. the weight is not heavy...i don't know why people saying this.. i get the package from the courier and i freak out thinking they didn't put the guitar inside..i have 6 guitars and this is not in heavy category.😳

First of all, this guitar sounds amazing. People complaining about it being too silent unplugged need to look up "solid body". It's so nice to play as well, it just feels great under your fingers.
It looks great too, although if you inspect it closely you can spot that they were a bit sloppy with the finish on the body, but I don't really care about that. The volume and eq knobs feel weird as well, as they dont turn smoothly, but they do their job.
My main problem with it was the fact that despite pestering the Thomann people for days with messages, and their subsequent promises that they would thoroughly check the guitar, I still received a piece with a completely messed up intonation above the 12. fret, where jazz is played a lot. Awful.
I probably won't return it, as I hope this can be sorted by my luthier guy, and the guitar really does sound amazing, but I was still hoping I wouldnt have to deal with this as soon as I buy it.

Had to buy this guitar because it seemed very intresting, great specs and good looking. Out of the box the action was not to my taste and the stock strings where a bit dull. So had to do little work on the action and change the strings. It still has some sharp frets and some string buzz that needs to be taken care of, but otherwise the guitar has a nice feel to it. Theres not much acoustic sound from the guitar but ut still sounds good acousticly. Pluged in is when this guitar srarts to shine. It has a very nice sound and the trebke and bass pots have a large spectrum so you dail in all kinds of nkce sounds. But the electronics in the guitar are a bit cheap, but i guess they are easy to change. Even if the guitar has a few faults I love it.